At some point in the recent history of spelling, the word "light" became too heavy, weighing in at five letters, and was thus "lightened" to a mere four letters, "lite."

We live in a world where everything has to be lite. Heavy has become, almost exclusively, a pejorative term. "Don't be so heavy! Lighten up! (Sorry, that should read "Liten up!") Lite is what we want from our drinks and our foods. Lite is what we want from our bathroom scales. Lite is what we want from our relationships. We are so involved with being lite that we are in danger of taking off and floating away.

In Hebrew, the word for heavy is kaveid and comes from the same root as the word kavod which means honor or respect. We don't like "heavy." Respect. Honor. These are "heavy" words. Difficult words in our times.

Each of the forefathers of the Jewish People represents a certain force, a certain aspect in Creation. The aspect that Abraham personifies is chesed -- kindness. The nature of kindness is that it requires a recipient. And thus it was that Abraham's tent was always open on all sides to receive guests. Abraham's nature was expansive. He went out to the world. He wanted to be close to others.

Isaac is the antithesis of Abraham. He represents limitation, staying within one's own borders. Isaac's quality is the quality of fear. Fear of making a spiritual error, an error which might blemish the entire universe. Today fear is about as un-PC as possible. But we all need a healthy dose of fear in order to live. A world without fear looks something like a natural history film of lemmings on holiday in Alaska.

Jacob is the synthesis of his father, Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham. What do you get when you synthesize expansiveness that desires to be close, the quality of Abraham, with a fear of being too close, the quality of Isaac?

You get honor. You get respect. You get kavod.

Being worthy of true kavod is something almost completely lost from the world in our pursuit of "lite."

When we wish to give kavod to someone, we feel an equal feeling of a desire to be close to that person and a fear of being close. My very love for that person whom I wish to honor and give respect is coupled with a fear of being too close, of making an error in his eyes. The very reason that I love him -- his greatness -- is the reasonhat I am afraid of him. This is the essence of respect, of honor. Love and fear in equal doses.

It is for this reason that Jacob is the personification of honor, of respect, of kavod, because he is a synthesis of Abraham and Isaac. This is why Jacob personifies Torah, because true honor is the honor of Torah.

It's heavy, man.

The wedding gown g'mach (free lending organization) opened only at 8:30 p.m., and only one evening a week. At 8:20 there was already a crowd in front of the door. We all seemed to be in a hurry, and were knocking on the door, ringing the bell, etc.

We heard the radio playing inside, and we all pictured the strict lady inside the house, resting on the sofa, enjoying the radio program and refusing to budge until exactly 8:30. Some of the women in the crowd started complaining: "Come on, can't she just let us in, we'll be quiet until her radio program is over!" said one. "Boy, she's a real stickler for time," said another...I think it's quite rude of her not to answer the door."

We were already thinking of calling her from one of our cellular phones, when suddenly, a lady came running up the stairs. She said, "I'm so sorry to have kept you all waiting, they kept me late at work." As she reached the door, she heard the radio playing inside and said, "Oh, that must be my radio alarm clock that went off at the wrong time."

Needless to say, we all walked in feeling pretty ashamed of ourselves for having wrongfully judged this kind lady.

Dear Anonymous,

I think that you should give him/her a prize! The Sages of the Talmud ask the same question! They answer that every animal has a task to perform in the world, and there's something we can learn from them.

For example, say our Sages, we can learn modesty from a cat, and honesty and industriousness from an ant. Cats are basically shy animals and are discreet about taking care of their personal needs. Ants are hard-working, and they are "honest" in that they don't steal from each other.

King David tried to fathom the meaning behind each animal and he succeeded -- with two exceptions. One was the spider and the other was the wasp. So, G-d showed King David very clearly the need for those two animals as well:

When running for his life from King Saul, David hid in a cave. King Saul and his soldiers were searching everywhere. G-d sent a spider to spin a web over the opening of the cave in which David was hiding. When the soldiers came to his cave and saw it was covered with a spider's web, they moved straight past it, not imagining that the web was freshly made.

On another occasion David entered secretly into King Saul's military camp at night. King Saul's general, Avner, turned over in his sleep and, unknowingly, trapped David with his legs. A wasp came and stung Avner, causing him to open his legs, allowing David to escape.

Another answer is that G-d made unkosher animals in order to reward us for following the commandment not to eat them.